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There are three notable political events this week. Tonight is the first Republican presidential candidates' debate since the new Tea Party extremist, Texas Governor Rick Perry, entered the race. Look for Villagers in the media....no matter how poorly Praying Perry performs tonight....to gush uncontrollably over the gunslinging Texan.

Tomorrow night will be President Obama's address to Congress. Because Obama is in full campaign mode now, I actually expect him to say all the right things....Republicans are hopelessly obstructionistic, and GOP "ideas" to fix the nation's economic woes have already proven to be utter failures.

Let me rephrase, the GOP has no new ideas for the economy. Republicans have but one idea....tax cuts. And as we've seen in the last ten years....tax cuts, especially when given to our richest citizens.....do not generate jobs. The other idea that Republicans have is to cut government spending. But, cutting government spending is actually only a corollary of the GOP's only idea...tax cuts. The purpose of cutting spending, as far as Republicans are concerned, is to be able to provide deeper tax cuts for, primarily, our richest citizens.

"America should be a job machine: jobs being created all the time, people looking for employees to join their enterprises," he said.

Sure, Mitt....we agree....and how do you propose to turn America into a job machine?

He would seek a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, cut non-security discretionary spending by 5 percent, eliminate the estate tax and undo the 2010 health care overhaul championed by President Barack Obama.

If that's a jobs plan....I'm Bill Gates.

Expect President Obama to address GOP "ideas", like Romney's, for the foolishness that those "ideas" truly are. I also expect the President to remind viewers of how Paul Ryan's Roadmap to Ruin and Governor Rick Perry's nullification mentality would scrap Medicare and replace it with a Wall Street directed, for-profit privatization plan which would give American seniors less for more.

No matter what Obama says, or sets forward as a reality-based plan to increase employment, Republicans are never going to agree to any of it. The top priority for Republicans, as their almost-three year campaign to obstruct everything demonstrates, is to limit the Democratic president's stay in the White House to four years.

The third event this week is the commemoration of 9-11. This being the 10 year "anniversary", I fully expect the Villagers, and all the usual suspects who are always wrong, to be in full peacock preening mode.

No matter the amount of rah-rahing done by the sickening Beltway Bullsh*tters.....there is no doubt in my mind that the United States is worse off 10 years removed from 9-11.

Let me explain.

We are worse off economically. The reason we are worse off financially is because of the hysterical overreaction of our leaders following 9-11.

The U.S. spent an astounding $698 billion on the military last year, an 81% increase over the last decade.

As a percentage of GDP, U.S. military spending has increased from 3.1% in 2001 to 4.8% last year.

Not only has our defense spending doubled since 9-11, but "defense industry profits have nearly quadrupled, approaching $25 billion last year."

Remember.....all of this spending...and profit-making...was because of a couple of thousand anarchist-extremists scattered throughout middle eastern nations.

In addition to the doubling of the defense budget since 9-11, the United States has also more than doubled its spending on the Orwellian-named Department of Homeland Security. From $22 billion for the same agencies in 2001 to $55 billion today.

Furthermore, civilian intelligence agencies are now spending $55 billion per year....almost double the $30 billion we spent in 2001.

What's odd about this explosion of, you know, big government spending,....is the fact that very little is ever heard from our self-appointed Tea Party national hall monitors about...well...this explosion in big government spending. $350 billion per year of additional spending on chasing less than two dozen radicals, $33 billion more on defending the Homeland, whateverthehell that is supposed to mean, and $25 billion more for domestic-spying and eavesdropping programs, both a clear and present violation of several Constitutional guarantees. That adds up to over $400 billion more being spent now on various and sundry "keeping us safe" programs than we spent before 2001.

All of that wasted money....all of those dead and wounded bodies....all of our military occupations and operations in middle eastern countries....have made us less safe from Muslim extremists. The very reason radicalized Muslims want to kill themselves in order to kill Americans is because 1) we side with Israel's apartheid program in Gaza and 2) America thinks it has the right to interfere, militarily, in primarily-Muslim nations.

So not only have we damaged our own country economically by our hysterical, and in some cases, cynical, overrreaction to 9-11...but we have also damaged ourselves security-wise by actually creating more Muslim extremists because of our even larger military footprint in Muslim nations.

What Americans should be told this weekend...but of course won't be....is that after 10 years of hysterical reactions by our "leaders" following 9-11....we are worse off as a country. Though Osama bin Laden is dead...his plan to bankrupt the United States and make us weaker is....how would Charlie Sheen put it?....winning.